The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Sunday, July 10, 2016

On the Unity of Terror - Bret Stephens

Islamic terrorism has had a banner few weeks, with 49
Americans gunned down inOrlando, 45
travelers killed in Istanbul, 20 diners butchered in Dhaka, and morethan200 Iraqis blown up in Baghdad.

Oh, and some Israeli settlers were killed,
too. But they’re not quite in thesame category,right?

In November, after Islamic State’s massacres in Paris, John Kerry
offered someunscripted thoughts on how
the atrocity differed from others. “There’s somethingdifferent about what happened from Charlie
Hebdo, and I think everybody wouldfeelthat,” he said, referring to the January 2015
attack on the satirical Frenchnewspaper. Hecontinued:

“There was a sort of particularized focus [to the Hebdo attack] and
perhaps evenalegitimacy in terms of—not a legitimacy, but
a rationale that you could attachyourself tosomehow and say, okay, they’re really angry
because of this and that. ThisFriday [inParis] was absolutely indiscriminate. It
wasn’t to aggrieve one particular senseof wrong.It was to terrorize people.”

Mr. Kerry’s remarks again betrayed the
administration’s cluelessness about ISIS,whichaims to annihilate anything it doesn’t
consider . . . Islamic. Understanding itstakfiriversion of Islam, with its sweeping
declarations of apostasy, is essential tounderstanding how it thinks and operates.

But no less telling was Mr. Kerry’s view that
not all terrorism is fundamentallyalike;that some acts of terror have a rationale
“you could attach yourself to.” Thecomment isstriking not for being unusual but for being
ordinary, another formulation oftheconventional wisdom that terrorism, like war,
is politics by other means. Fromsuch aview it’s a short step to treating some acts
of terror as legitimate, or nearlyso.

Which brings me to the case of Hallel Yaffe
Ariel, a 13-year-old Israeli girlwho onThursday was stabbed to death in her sleep by
a 19-year-old intruder namedMohammadTra’ayra. It’s difficult to imagine any act
as evil or as cowardly as murderinga child inher sleep. But Hallel lived with her family
in the West Bank Israeli town ofKiryat Arba,making her a settler, while Tra’ayra, who was
shot dead on the scene, came fromanearby Palestinian village.

What happened to Hallel has happened to
countless settlers: five members of theFogelfamily, butchered in their beds in 2011; the
three teenage boys who werekidnapped andmurdered by Hamas in 2014; the rabbi who was
shot and killed on Friday on a WestBankroad while driving with his wife and two
children. Yet their deaths are supposedto bedifferent from those of other terrorism
victims, since they were all “occupiers”whosepolitical crimes rendered them complicit in
their own tragedy. That’s how muchofglobal public opinion has long treated
terrorism when the target is Israel. Ithas arationale. It’s understandable, if not
justifiable. It’s Israel’s problem,Israel’s fault, andhas no bearing on the rest of us.

Formanyyears,theTurkish government of Recep
Tayyip Erdogan made common cause with Hamas. Israeliofficials have accused Turkey of hosting a
Hamas command center—a key point ofcontention
in Jerusalem’s efforts to reconcile with Ankara—and Mr. Erdogan hasrepeatedly met with Hamas leader Khaled
Mashal, including just days before lastmonth’s
airport attack.

The Turkish people
deserve full sympathy for that atrocity. But no sympathy isowed aTurkish potentate who has been sympathetic to
terrorists as long as they aimedtheirfire at Israel or other convenient targets.
All the more so since until recentlyMr.Erdogan’s attitude toward Islamic State
matched ambivalence with indifference,to putit diplomatically.

What’s true of Turkey goes for other recent
victims of terrorism. Pakistan haslongplayed a double game with terrorists,
supporting groups that hit civiliantargets inAfghanistan and India, only to be shocked
when the same groups, or theircousins,turned against the mother country.

Saudi Arabia’s former interior minister, the
late Prince Nayef, was for yearsthe head ofthe Saudi Committee for Supporting the Al Aqsa
Intifada, in which capacity hedistributed
millions to “the families of martyrs.” As late as November 2002, heblamed9/11 on a Zionist plot, only to be disabused
of the view once al Qaeda beganattackingSaudi Arabia directly.

Or take Bangladesh. In April, Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina addressed the murderof asecularist blogger named Nazimuddin
Samad—part of an assassination campaign inwhich some 30 secularists have been killed in the past three years—by
asking,“Ifsomeone writes filthy things about my
religion, why should we tolerate it?” Nowhergovernment seems astonished to learn that
ISIS has Bangladesh in its sights.

It’s
depressing to think that the only way the world might understand the truthaboutterrorism is to have some experience of it.
Still, it’s worth stressing thatterrorism is notthe continuation of politics but the negation
of it, and that the murder of a13-year-old“settler” has no more a rationale than what
ISIS did in Orlando, Istanbul andDhaka.Terrorism can be defeated, but only once that
lesson is learned.

Write
bstephens@wsj.com.

Bret StephensSource: Wall Street Journal Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.